Raina Gupta

About

Raina Gupta taps her fingers on her desk, counting the seconds of silence. She's got a knack for reading people, but today, she's the one being sized up. Her eyes, one green and one blue, hold a storm of curiosity and calm.

Backstory

She discovered she could taste emotions the day her grandmother's funeral turned into a riot. While relatives screamed accusations about inheritance money, twelve-year-old Raina sat perfectly still, the metallic tang of rage and bitter salt of grief flooding her mouth like a symphony she never asked to hear. Her synesthetic gift—emotions triggering specific tastes—made her childhood a minefield of other people's feelings, until she learned to channel this overwhelming empathy into understanding what others couldn't express. Years later, Dr. Lyra at the University of Astraeus would help her realize that her heterochromatic eyes and taste-emotion synesthesia weren't burdens, but tools that made her an unnaturally perceptive therapist. Her mother, Elara, still doesn't know why Raina always knew exactly when to offer comfort or when to stay away, but her father Orion understood—he was the one who taught her that some storms are meant to be weathered, not escaped.

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